June 3, 2025 • 16 mins
This week, Tony discusses the allure of big-buck destinations, and whether figuring out how to get a tag for one of them is worth it for most of us.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
which has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about kind of
premier deer tags. It was primo tags that you have
to draw and whether they are really worth the way
and the cost of admission. The deer hunting landscape has
(00:41):
changed quite a bit in the last twenty years in
a lot of different ways. One is that there aren't
as many true premier destinations as there used to be,
mostly because the secret is out on how to grow
big bucks every state with deer, and it is, you know,
kind of pretty much churning out giants in certain places.
It's mostly because we know how to facilitate the growth
of big deer. Now, no, that doesn't mean that South
(01:02):
Carolina is the same as hunting Iowa. However, there are
still premier destinations and you could still get a tag
for them, but are they really worth it? That's what
I'm going to talk about right now. When my daughters
were five, we took them to Disney World. I know
a lot of people have different opinions on Disney as
a company and Disney World specifically as a vacation destination. Now,
(01:25):
I didn't grow up in the kind of family where
that was even a remote option, so it felt kind
of cool to book the trip and surprise my daughters
with it. I was actually pretty agnostic on the whole thing.
You know. I knew it would cost about a billion
dollars and I'd probably stand in a lot of long
lines in the Florida humidity while the sweat rolled down
my ass crack, and I thought a lot about how
much I missed drinking. All of those things were true,
(01:46):
but it was also kind of an amazing trip. Five
year olds believe in everything because they are really stupid,
But that also makes a place like Disney World super fun.
Every princess, at least to them, was an actual princess.
All of the characters blew their little minds, and the
whole experience was honestly so much better than I expected. Now,
being the people we are. We stayed in the cheapest
(02:07):
hotel that Disney offers for the bulk of our trip.
What I didn't know was that my wife had booked
us a few nights at a mid priced hotel, complete
with giraffes and other African game visible right off of
our hotel room deck. It was cool, but also kind
of not. The folks who can afford a six hundred
dollars a night hotel room are not people I have
much in common with. There was a weird vibe at
(02:29):
the pools and at the restaurants, where everyone kind of
kept to themselves, and honestly, the cheaper hotel was just
so much more fun. We realized afterwards that it just
wasn't our crowd. I've always been kind of a scrub
that way. If you get me the option to hunt
a diy tag on public land somewhere while staying in
a tent over some kind of guided whitetail hunt with
cushy accommodations, I'm going to always choose the tent route,
(02:52):
even when I don't have to pay for the luxury hunt.
It's just who I am, and I can't really say why.
I think that's part of the reason I feel at
home while staying in some random tiny town in Nebraska
or Oklahoma versus talking to the average suburb dweller up
here in the Twin Cities, who, while we live in
the exact same spot, are often just a totally different
species of human from me. You've probably been in situations
(03:14):
like that in your life. All of this leads me
to the topic of the day, which is premieer deer tags.
Next week I'm going to talk about guided hunts and
whether they are worth it, should you do one, and
all that jazz. But right now, I just want to
talk about premier tags and you know, premier destinations, because,
after all, who amongst us hasn't spent a little time
daydreaming about hunting Southern Iowa on about November seventh, when
(03:37):
all hell has broken loose and all day sits fly
by in the blake of an eye. The thing I've
learned about this stuff is that what we think about
in our heads is often not even close to what
actually happens when we do this stuff. It's okay, though,
life is mostly like that, and it's not a good
excuse to not try new things, but more of kind
of a reality check we should give ourselves when we
(03:57):
need it. So to frame this whole thing up, should
probably hop in the way back machine and look at
how this all got started. When I was a younger
lad eager to shoot any deer and really bad at
shooting any deer, the buzz was all about Buffalo County, Wisconsin.
The deer world was absolutely obsessed with this spot in
southwestern Wisconsin because it was ground zero for you know,
(04:17):
kind of modern trophy management. And yes, back then we
felt okay calling big bucks trophies, even though we weasel
word it now and pretend that mature bucks are somehow different,
as if the right age class doesn't also happen to
come with the biggest racks. A group of landowners in
Buffalo County decided they were done shooting scrappers, and after
many years, they started shooting big deer. Actually it wasn't
(04:39):
that many years. It was only a few years. That's
kind of it in a nutshell, and it got a
lot of attention. You couldn't find an outdoor writer at
the time who wasn't getting an all expense paid trip
to some outfitter in Buffalo County to shoot a big
one and sing the editorial praises of the region. People
had been obsessed with big bucks since way before that,
but Buffalo County put trophy management on the map. It
(05:02):
changed how we look at deer and how we look
at areas. Now pretty soon you had Pike County, Illinois
coming up in conversation for the same reasons, and after
a while it was about whole states like i Wan Kansas.
Now you won't hear me argue that either of those
states isn't a great place to hunt, but there is
a hell of a lot of marketing that has gone
into this whole thing. Now you might not guess this,
(05:23):
but just about any state or region that is really
known for big bucks is often pretty light on tourist destinations.
Out of state money isn't just flowing into these places,
or it wasn't, but the appeal of hunting giant deer
turned things over in that respect. State game agencies certainly
noticed the demand and they reacted by marketing their hunting
(05:44):
as worth every penny. And this is an exclusive to
whitetail hunting. Either. If you don't believe that, go talk
to a Native Colorado resident about elk hunting, or maybe
a Native South Dakota resident about pheasant season while I'm
being a bit of a passive aggressive businatche here. The
truth is that all of these opportunities weren't just flashy
marketing methods for roping in some extra revenue. You can
(06:07):
shoot a giant in Buffalo County or Pike County, or
some parts of Texas where the racks are as wide
as the Senderos, or in southern Iowa or central Kansas.
The question is is it really worth it for the
average hunter to try to spend a little time in
any of these places. That really depends I talk to
a lot of hunters every year, and the typical thought
(06:28):
process around primo destinations is simply that it's a conduit
to kill a big deer. We can't help ourselves. But
this is how we look at these opportunities. It's less
about the chance to have an amazing experience that you
just can't get in your home deer woods, and more
about some magical score like one hundred and fifty inches
or whatever we deem big enough for the price of admission,
(06:48):
And the price of admission is kind of steep, at
least compared to most of our hunts. If you want
to go to a county or a region known for
big deer, you will likely have to pay to hunt.
There's some public in Buffalo County, for example, and some
public and a few neighboring counties that are dang near
as good, but you'll have your work cutout for you.
Whole states are a better option, and whether that's Ohio
(07:10):
or Illinois, or Iowa or Kansas or wherever, you'll have
to figure out the tag game. In Iowa, even in
the worst parts of the state, you're looking at one
or two year weight while buying points. If you want
to shoot a buck that might wander off the Lukowski's
farm or maybe the Drury's farm, you're in for a
much longer wait. You'll be into that tag for a
minimum of about seven hundred bucks before you even get
(07:32):
the chance to hunt, and then you have to find
a place to go to some people that's a deal
breaker in and of itself, which I totally get. That's
a lot of money for a deer license, but it's
also a ticket to a hunt, maybe a different kind
of hunt than you're used to now. I've drawn Iowa
four times in my life, and I will keep drawing
(07:52):
until I can't get a tag. It's not because I'm
obsessed with shooting a giant, because I'm not, and I
don't really care about that a whole lot anymore. But
what I like is the whole month of November to bowhunt.
In my home state of Minnesota, our gun season always
opens up in the first week of November, which is
a huge kick to the old knackers. Being able to
(08:13):
leave here and go to someplace where the gun season
won't open for a couple of weeks is really nice
and it's worth the cost to me. But it's also
not a terrible drive, and I've found some public land
that I really like hunting. Plenty of other white tail
heavy states open up their gun seasons in November, with
a lot of them starting in the middle of the month,
and there's still a lot of rut left after that.
(08:35):
So what I would say it can be a good
reason to leave home and go spend some time working
some new ground where you don't have the looming threat
of the Orange Army hanging over you if you want
to kill them with a boat. Is that enough for
most people to buy some points to play the waiting game?
Probably not. I had my worst hunt ever in Iowa
(09:03):
last year, and it was still worth every penny. I
still killed a buck, got to see some really cool
running activity, and woke up in a tent for several
days in a row with the only chore on the
list being find a buck and shoot him. I don't
want to give the eye with DNR any more ideas,
but I'd pay more for that opportunity, although I'm pretty
(09:23):
sure they know that Kansas is another option. I've only
deer hunted Kansas once and it was pure bonkers. I
saw giants, I saw so much running activity, and I
had a great time. I was planning on applying down
there this year, mostly out of a weird desire to
hunt someplace new, but I didn't find anything while I
was turkey hunting down there that convinced me I should.
(09:44):
I got about halfway to a decent plan, so that's
to be continued, I guess. But I also should say this.
I did find a heck of a lot of quail
and roosters on public land down there, so I think
I'm going to head back there maybe December or January,
hunt those birds with safe and maybe see if I
can find something that really trips my trigger deer wise. Now,
(10:06):
one of the reasons that I didn't apply for Kansas
tag is something that all of us probably run into
when we consider a primo tag. The pressure. Now I'm
not talking about hunting pressure. Now. I know that might
sound crazy, but having an expensive tag that you've waited
years for is both exciting and sort of low grade torture.
(10:28):
I'm stuck in this kind of mentality with my wyoming deer,
elk and antelope points. I have a lot of each
and have come to realize that I'm only ever going
to get one truly amazing elk hunt in my life.
Ditto for a high country meal Deer hunt. Antelope are
a little bit different of a story, but I still
have the same anxiety around those points, even if it
isn't quite as discombobulating as the elk and deer points.
(10:51):
I'm almost terrified to burn those points because then the
pressure will be on. If life happens and I can't
carve out the time I think I need, it will
kill me. If I go and something sucks and I
get thrown a curveballer three, the pressure will increase immensely.
You don't want to burn like twenty years of points
(11:11):
on a tag and then eat it. But again, that's
not the best way to look at it. Those points
are a ticket to a hunt I just can't get
any other way. And spending time in the mountains where
the prospect of googling in a bunch of bulls is real,
is not a bad thing. Just like when that IOA
tag shows up and you realize that it's now time
to get serious, the pressure gets real and I'll never
(11:35):
forget something Randy Neuberg said to me one time about this,
which was basically that when you get an amazing tag,
you still have to put in a commensurate amount of effort.
In our day dreams, the one hundred and seventy inch
bucks come easy, but in reality they just don't, not
unless you have about fifteen grand to spend and don't
mind killing one that is in a pen. Anyway, free
(11:56):
range giants of any species, even on tightly contra old properties,
aren't all that easy. And if you think going from
shooting one hundred inch bucks in Georgia every fifth season
to being a stone cold killer, the moment you rattle
in a one sixty in Pike County is going to
be easy. It probably won't be. There's a lot of
pressure to the premier tags, premier region thing, and it
(12:18):
kind of sucks. Everything in life seems kind of weirdly
to balance out. Or maybe that's just how I look
at things. But if you think about the prospect of
hunting an area with more big ones than anywhere else,
you know, at least anywhere else you've ever set foot,
the balance to that whole thing is that there will
be far more pressure to actually kill that big one
than on some of your home state hunts. That can
(12:40):
be motivation to really do a lot of scouting, or
to figure out how to buy your way into a
sweet lease or something, or it can be just what
you need to never apply and never build up the
points and to only sit there in daydream forever. I
think this is where we often get things wrong about
these kinds of once in a lifetime, or at least
once not very often tags. We focus on the prospect
(13:01):
of a giant but not how to enjoy the opportunity.
In fact, most folks would probably have way more fun
if they took that big deer money and spent it
on a hog hunt down south. Now I know that
sounds like a joke, but it's actually not. Almost everyone
who doesn't live where hogs are prevalent thinks about hunting
pigs and how fun it would be, and they are right.
(13:22):
A pig hunt is often about ten thousand times more
enjoyable than your average deer hunt, But that comes with
a lot of qualifiers that I don't really want to
get into. The point I'm trying to make, maybe poorly,
is that these primo dear tags are a great option
for a certain kind of hunter, but not all of us.
If the biggest appeal to it all is that you
(13:43):
might kill a buck that scores I don't know, thirty
inches more than your personal best, there's a lot to
consider a hunt might be worth it, but for that
reason alone. For some of us it is, and some
of us it isn't. Now, if the appeal is that
the prospect of a big one is real and the
opportunity to hunt some timeframe or some way is just
too interesting, now you're onto something different. I know a
(14:04):
few guys who live around an awful lot of timber
who can't hunt the Kansas grass lines enough. If you
don't have high deer density in your world or high
visibility deer in your world, then going to a place
with either or both can be so much fun. If
you have to stay out of the woods while the
gun hunters take their turn, and you really want the
chance to witness bang and run activity, then a primo
(14:28):
region hunt might just be the ticket. And here's the
last thing I'll say on that if your mentality is
in the right spot and you put in the work,
the odds are very high that you'll feel that the
money and time are worth it. This is something I've
realized about Iowa. I just enjoy the people in the
land and the deer hunting a whole hell of a lot.
I thought after I drew my first tag, I'd never
(14:49):
pay up to hunt there again, and then I thought
the same thing after my second tag. Now I don't
ever look at it like it'll be a one and
done deal for me. I look at it like every
couple of years, I'll get my chance, and if the
schedule works out, I'm gonna load up my camping gear
and I'm gonna head south. I don't expect to kill
a giant, and I won't be patient enough to facilitate
that anyway, But I don't care I just enjoy the
(15:10):
hunting there, and that makes it worth the investment. Someday,
probably next year, honestly, I'll roll Kansas into the potential
mix just because of the same reasons, and someday I'll
get the stones to burn through those wyoming points and
just take the ride. How those hunts will end up
is anyone's guess, but I highly doubt I'll regret any
of those opportunities. So that's what I'm gonna sign off with.
(15:32):
There are still places you can go where the odds
are better than most that at some point a good
one is going to work his way towards you. Whether
that's worth it or not is a totally subjective thing,
but I can tell you that it probably will be,
and that those opportunities are going in one direction, and
that is not in your favor. Pay a lot now
or pay more later, wait a while now, or wait
(15:56):
longer later. The way things are going, the opportunities might
almost entirely go away as well, which is a scary
thought and might be enough motivation to take the plunge.
And if you do, you might want to consider booking
a guided hunt, which is what I'm going to talk
about next. Week. That's it for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson.
This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
(16:17):
is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank
you so much for listening and for all of your support.
If you want some more hunting content, you know where
to go the meeteater dot com. You can check out
sweet hunts from Clay and Brent and the whole crew,
tons of podcasts there. We're dropping new content every single day.
Go check it out at the meadeater dot com
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
which has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about kind of
premier deer tags. It was primo tags that you have
to draw and whether they are really worth the way
and the cost of admission. The deer hunting landscape has
(00:41):
changed quite a bit in the last twenty years in
a lot of different ways. One is that there aren't
as many true premier destinations as there used to be,
mostly because the secret is out on how to grow
big bucks every state with deer, and it is, you know,
kind of pretty much churning out giants in certain places.
It's mostly because we know how to facilitate the growth
of big deer. Now, no, that doesn't mean that South
(01:02):
Carolina is the same as hunting Iowa. However, there are
still premier destinations and you could still get a tag
for them, but are they really worth it? That's what
I'm going to talk about right now. When my daughters
were five, we took them to Disney World. I know
a lot of people have different opinions on Disney as
a company and Disney World specifically as a vacation destination. Now,
(01:25):
I didn't grow up in the kind of family where
that was even a remote option, so it felt kind
of cool to book the trip and surprise my daughters
with it. I was actually pretty agnostic on the whole thing.
You know. I knew it would cost about a billion
dollars and I'd probably stand in a lot of long
lines in the Florida humidity while the sweat rolled down
my ass crack, and I thought a lot about how
much I missed drinking. All of those things were true,
(01:46):
but it was also kind of an amazing trip. Five
year olds believe in everything because they are really stupid,
But that also makes a place like Disney World super fun.
Every princess, at least to them, was an actual princess.
All of the characters blew their little minds, and the
whole experience was honestly so much better than I expected. Now,
being the people we are. We stayed in the cheapest
(02:07):
hotel that Disney offers for the bulk of our trip.
What I didn't know was that my wife had booked
us a few nights at a mid priced hotel, complete
with giraffes and other African game visible right off of
our hotel room deck. It was cool, but also kind
of not. The folks who can afford a six hundred
dollars a night hotel room are not people I have
much in common with. There was a weird vibe at
(02:29):
the pools and at the restaurants, where everyone kind of
kept to themselves, and honestly, the cheaper hotel was just
so much more fun. We realized afterwards that it just
wasn't our crowd. I've always been kind of a scrub
that way. If you get me the option to hunt
a diy tag on public land somewhere while staying in
a tent over some kind of guided whitetail hunt with
cushy accommodations, I'm going to always choose the tent route,
(02:52):
even when I don't have to pay for the luxury hunt.
It's just who I am, and I can't really say why.
I think that's part of the reason I feel at
home while staying in some random tiny town in Nebraska
or Oklahoma versus talking to the average suburb dweller up
here in the Twin Cities, who, while we live in
the exact same spot, are often just a totally different
species of human from me. You've probably been in situations
(03:14):
like that in your life. All of this leads me
to the topic of the day, which is premieer deer tags.
Next week I'm going to talk about guided hunts and
whether they are worth it, should you do one, and
all that jazz. But right now, I just want to
talk about premier tags and you know, premier destinations, because,
after all, who amongst us hasn't spent a little time
daydreaming about hunting Southern Iowa on about November seventh, when
(03:37):
all hell has broken loose and all day sits fly
by in the blake of an eye. The thing I've
learned about this stuff is that what we think about
in our heads is often not even close to what
actually happens when we do this stuff. It's okay, though,
life is mostly like that, and it's not a good
excuse to not try new things, but more of kind
of a reality check we should give ourselves when we
(03:57):
need it. So to frame this whole thing up, should
probably hop in the way back machine and look at
how this all got started. When I was a younger
lad eager to shoot any deer and really bad at
shooting any deer, the buzz was all about Buffalo County, Wisconsin.
The deer world was absolutely obsessed with this spot in
southwestern Wisconsin because it was ground zero for you know,
(04:17):
kind of modern trophy management. And yes, back then we
felt okay calling big bucks trophies, even though we weasel
word it now and pretend that mature bucks are somehow different,
as if the right age class doesn't also happen to
come with the biggest racks. A group of landowners in
Buffalo County decided they were done shooting scrappers, and after
many years, they started shooting big deer. Actually it wasn't
(04:39):
that many years. It was only a few years. That's
kind of it in a nutshell, and it got a
lot of attention. You couldn't find an outdoor writer at
the time who wasn't getting an all expense paid trip
to some outfitter in Buffalo County to shoot a big
one and sing the editorial praises of the region. People
had been obsessed with big bucks since way before that,
but Buffalo County put trophy management on the map. It
(05:02):
changed how we look at deer and how we look
at areas. Now pretty soon you had Pike County, Illinois
coming up in conversation for the same reasons, and after
a while it was about whole states like i Wan Kansas.
Now you won't hear me argue that either of those
states isn't a great place to hunt, but there is
a hell of a lot of marketing that has gone
into this whole thing. Now you might not guess this,
(05:23):
but just about any state or region that is really
known for big bucks is often pretty light on tourist destinations.
Out of state money isn't just flowing into these places,
or it wasn't, but the appeal of hunting giant deer
turned things over in that respect. State game agencies certainly
noticed the demand and they reacted by marketing their hunting
(05:44):
as worth every penny. And this is an exclusive to
whitetail hunting. Either. If you don't believe that, go talk
to a Native Colorado resident about elk hunting, or maybe
a Native South Dakota resident about pheasant season while I'm
being a bit of a passive aggressive businatche here. The
truth is that all of these opportunities weren't just flashy
marketing methods for roping in some extra revenue. You can
(06:07):
shoot a giant in Buffalo County or Pike County, or
some parts of Texas where the racks are as wide
as the Senderos, or in southern Iowa or central Kansas.
The question is is it really worth it for the
average hunter to try to spend a little time in
any of these places. That really depends I talk to
a lot of hunters every year, and the typical thought
(06:28):
process around primo destinations is simply that it's a conduit
to kill a big deer. We can't help ourselves. But
this is how we look at these opportunities. It's less
about the chance to have an amazing experience that you
just can't get in your home deer woods, and more
about some magical score like one hundred and fifty inches
or whatever we deem big enough for the price of admission,
(06:48):
And the price of admission is kind of steep, at
least compared to most of our hunts. If you want
to go to a county or a region known for
big deer, you will likely have to pay to hunt.
There's some public in Buffalo County, for example, and some
public and a few neighboring counties that are dang near
as good, but you'll have your work cutout for you.
Whole states are a better option, and whether that's Ohio
(07:10):
or Illinois, or Iowa or Kansas or wherever, you'll have
to figure out the tag game. In Iowa, even in
the worst parts of the state, you're looking at one
or two year weight while buying points. If you want
to shoot a buck that might wander off the Lukowski's
farm or maybe the Drury's farm, you're in for a
much longer wait. You'll be into that tag for a
minimum of about seven hundred bucks before you even get
(07:32):
the chance to hunt, and then you have to find
a place to go to some people that's a deal
breaker in and of itself, which I totally get. That's
a lot of money for a deer license, but it's
also a ticket to a hunt, maybe a different kind
of hunt than you're used to now. I've drawn Iowa
four times in my life, and I will keep drawing
(07:52):
until I can't get a tag. It's not because I'm
obsessed with shooting a giant, because I'm not, and I
don't really care about that a whole lot anymore. But
what I like is the whole month of November to bowhunt.
In my home state of Minnesota, our gun season always
opens up in the first week of November, which is
a huge kick to the old knackers. Being able to
(08:13):
leave here and go to someplace where the gun season
won't open for a couple of weeks is really nice
and it's worth the cost to me. But it's also
not a terrible drive, and I've found some public land
that I really like hunting. Plenty of other white tail
heavy states open up their gun seasons in November, with
a lot of them starting in the middle of the month,
and there's still a lot of rut left after that.
(08:35):
So what I would say it can be a good
reason to leave home and go spend some time working
some new ground where you don't have the looming threat
of the Orange Army hanging over you if you want
to kill them with a boat. Is that enough for
most people to buy some points to play the waiting game?
Probably not. I had my worst hunt ever in Iowa
(09:03):
last year, and it was still worth every penny. I
still killed a buck, got to see some really cool
running activity, and woke up in a tent for several
days in a row with the only chore on the
list being find a buck and shoot him. I don't
want to give the eye with DNR any more ideas,
but I'd pay more for that opportunity, although I'm pretty
(09:23):
sure they know that Kansas is another option. I've only
deer hunted Kansas once and it was pure bonkers. I
saw giants, I saw so much running activity, and I
had a great time. I was planning on applying down
there this year, mostly out of a weird desire to
hunt someplace new, but I didn't find anything while I
was turkey hunting down there that convinced me I should.
(09:44):
I got about halfway to a decent plan, so that's
to be continued, I guess. But I also should say this.
I did find a heck of a lot of quail
and roosters on public land down there, so I think
I'm going to head back there maybe December or January,
hunt those birds with safe and maybe see if I
can find something that really trips my trigger deer wise. Now,
(10:06):
one of the reasons that I didn't apply for Kansas
tag is something that all of us probably run into
when we consider a primo tag. The pressure. Now I'm
not talking about hunting pressure. Now. I know that might
sound crazy, but having an expensive tag that you've waited
years for is both exciting and sort of low grade torture.
(10:28):
I'm stuck in this kind of mentality with my wyoming deer,
elk and antelope points. I have a lot of each
and have come to realize that I'm only ever going
to get one truly amazing elk hunt in my life.
Ditto for a high country meal Deer hunt. Antelope are
a little bit different of a story, but I still
have the same anxiety around those points, even if it
isn't quite as discombobulating as the elk and deer points.
(10:51):
I'm almost terrified to burn those points because then the
pressure will be on. If life happens and I can't
carve out the time I think I need, it will
kill me. If I go and something sucks and I
get thrown a curveballer three, the pressure will increase immensely.
You don't want to burn like twenty years of points
(11:11):
on a tag and then eat it. But again, that's
not the best way to look at it. Those points
are a ticket to a hunt I just can't get
any other way. And spending time in the mountains where
the prospect of googling in a bunch of bulls is real,
is not a bad thing. Just like when that IOA
tag shows up and you realize that it's now time
to get serious, the pressure gets real and I'll never
(11:35):
forget something Randy Neuberg said to me one time about this,
which was basically that when you get an amazing tag,
you still have to put in a commensurate amount of effort.
In our day dreams, the one hundred and seventy inch
bucks come easy, but in reality they just don't, not
unless you have about fifteen grand to spend and don't
mind killing one that is in a pen. Anyway, free
(11:56):
range giants of any species, even on tightly contra old properties,
aren't all that easy. And if you think going from
shooting one hundred inch bucks in Georgia every fifth season
to being a stone cold killer, the moment you rattle
in a one sixty in Pike County is going to
be easy. It probably won't be. There's a lot of
pressure to the premier tags, premier region thing, and it
(12:18):
kind of sucks. Everything in life seems kind of weirdly
to balance out. Or maybe that's just how I look
at things. But if you think about the prospect of
hunting an area with more big ones than anywhere else,
you know, at least anywhere else you've ever set foot,
the balance to that whole thing is that there will
be far more pressure to actually kill that big one
than on some of your home state hunts. That can
(12:40):
be motivation to really do a lot of scouting, or
to figure out how to buy your way into a
sweet lease or something, or it can be just what
you need to never apply and never build up the
points and to only sit there in daydream forever. I
think this is where we often get things wrong about
these kinds of once in a lifetime, or at least
once not very often tags. We focus on the prospect
(13:01):
of a giant but not how to enjoy the opportunity.
In fact, most folks would probably have way more fun
if they took that big deer money and spent it
on a hog hunt down south. Now I know that
sounds like a joke, but it's actually not. Almost everyone
who doesn't live where hogs are prevalent thinks about hunting
pigs and how fun it would be, and they are right.
(13:22):
A pig hunt is often about ten thousand times more
enjoyable than your average deer hunt, But that comes with
a lot of qualifiers that I don't really want to
get into. The point I'm trying to make, maybe poorly,
is that these primo dear tags are a great option
for a certain kind of hunter, but not all of us.
If the biggest appeal to it all is that you
(13:43):
might kill a buck that scores I don't know, thirty
inches more than your personal best, there's a lot to
consider a hunt might be worth it, but for that
reason alone. For some of us it is, and some
of us it isn't. Now, if the appeal is that
the prospect of a big one is real and the
opportunity to hunt some timeframe or some way is just
too interesting, now you're onto something different. I know a
(14:04):
few guys who live around an awful lot of timber
who can't hunt the Kansas grass lines enough. If you
don't have high deer density in your world or high
visibility deer in your world, then going to a place
with either or both can be so much fun. If
you have to stay out of the woods while the
gun hunters take their turn, and you really want the
chance to witness bang and run activity, then a primo
(14:28):
region hunt might just be the ticket. And here's the
last thing I'll say on that if your mentality is
in the right spot and you put in the work,
the odds are very high that you'll feel that the
money and time are worth it. This is something I've
realized about Iowa. I just enjoy the people in the
land and the deer hunting a whole hell of a lot.
I thought after I drew my first tag, I'd never
(14:49):
pay up to hunt there again, and then I thought
the same thing after my second tag. Now I don't
ever look at it like it'll be a one and
done deal for me. I look at it like every
couple of years, I'll get my chance, and if the
schedule works out, I'm gonna load up my camping gear
and I'm gonna head south. I don't expect to kill
a giant, and I won't be patient enough to facilitate
that anyway, But I don't care I just enjoy the
(15:10):
hunting there, and that makes it worth the investment. Someday,
probably next year, honestly, I'll roll Kansas into the potential
mix just because of the same reasons, and someday I'll
get the stones to burn through those wyoming points and
just take the ride. How those hunts will end up
is anyone's guess, but I highly doubt I'll regret any
of those opportunities. So that's what I'm gonna sign off with.
(15:32):
There are still places you can go where the odds
are better than most that at some point a good
one is going to work his way towards you. Whether
that's worth it or not is a totally subjective thing,
but I can tell you that it probably will be,
and that those opportunities are going in one direction, and
that is not in your favor. Pay a lot now
or pay more later, wait a while now, or wait
(15:56):
longer later. The way things are going, the opportunities might
almost entirely go away as well, which is a scary
thought and might be enough motivation to take the plunge.
And if you do, you might want to consider booking
a guided hunt, which is what I'm going to talk
about next. Week. That's it for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson.
This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
(16:17):
is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank
you so much for listening and for all of your support.
If you want some more hunting content, you know where
to go the meeteater dot com. You can check out
sweet hunts from Clay and Brent and the whole crew,
tons of podcasts there. We're dropping new content every single day.
Go check it out at the meadeater dot com
Host
Mark Kenyon
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